Today I got my first look at Moonlight Sonata footage, a rough cut that gives a general feel for how the thing will look, but also demonstrates that we have a long way to go to get to the finished product. We had planned to have the opening shot be a long, continuous steady-cam shot, but as fuego has combed through the takes it seems we don’t have one that really works from start to end. That’s not a disaster; there is plenty of footage to make Paul’s entrance into the cafĂ© a nervous and disorienting time. Not all the takes in this cut are the ones I remember most fondly from shooting, but it’s about making all the parts work together.
Man, I sure wish we’d had more extras.
The cut did not even include the concert scene, so I don’t know how that is going to work, and the voiceovers aren’t there and the walking through Prague and all the audio post, so at this point all I can really report is that there are shots that look fantastic. The voiceover raw files are on their way to me; and I will be going through them and picking out the best takes over the next few days, and putting the bits together into seamless delivery. It’s a job that can take as much time as I’m willing to give it.
The underground bar looks great. Really really great. I was worried about the video noise I was seeing but at least on the version I have (far from big-screen quality but pretty good for a computer monitor) the noise is not a problem. Using the real audio and getting the music in comes much later, so I’m trying to not worry about that too much (yet).
A long way to go, but so far, so good!